How to Annotate Your Opening Lines

Notes are for the person you will be in June

You will not remember why you chose this move. That is the whole premise. The version of you writing the note has an engine open, a database open and twenty minutes of context. The version reading it has none of those and is looking at a board.

Write for that second person.

A note that repeats the engine tells you nothing you cannot get again. A note that gives the reason rebuilds the move from scratch.

The position the notes above describe. With the board in front of you, "hits f7 twice" is checkable in a second. Without it, you are taking the note on trust, which is exactly the problem a note is supposed to solve.

What not to write

The evaluation. “+0.4” is available any time you want it, in one second. Recording it uses space and teaches you nothing.

Best move. You saved it in your repertoire. That is already the claim.

Forced, only move, main line. These describe the position’s status, not your reasoning. They are the kind of note that feels like documentation and functions as noise.

Long variations. A note is not a place for a ten move sequence. If the sequence matters, it belongs in the repertoire as actual moves you can be tested on.

What to write

What the move does. “Hits f7 twice.” “Takes the b5 square from the knight.” “Stops Bg4 for good.” One clause, concrete, about this position.

What you were worried about. “Not Nf3 here because of Bg4.” Half of a repertoire decision is the move you rejected, and that half evaporates fastest.

The plan, once per line. Somewhere near the point where the opening becomes a middlegame, write the plan in a sentence. Which pawn breaks matter, where the pieces want to be. That single note is worth more than every other note in the line.

Anything that surprised you. If you had to look at a position twice, say why. Surprise is a reliable signal that you will be surprised again.

The test

Cover the moves. Read only your note. Can you reconstruct the move?

If yes, the note is doing its job. If no, you have written a label rather than a reason, and in three months it will be as useful as a blank.

Where notes pay for themselves

Two places, both of which come up constantly.

When the move order changes. A memorised sequence fails when the opponent transposes. A move you can rebuild from its reason survives, which is the practical argument in transpositions and why your repertoire is smaller than it looks.

When you come back after a break. A repertoire you have not touched in six months is largely unreadable without notes and largely intact with them. This is the difference between resuming and starting again.

How much

Less than you think. Notes on every move produce a wall of text nobody reads, including you.

A reasonable density is a note at each genuine decision point, plus one plan sentence per line. In a repertoire of two hundred positions that might be fifteen notes, and those fifteen will carry the whole thing.

One habit worth adopting

Write the note at the moment you decide, not later.

The reasoning is loud while you are choosing between two moves and completely gone by the following week. A note written a month afterwards is a reconstruction, and it usually reconstructs the engine’s opinion rather than yours.

Chess Prep Pro lets you attach a comment to any move in a repertoire, and shows it while you are training that position, which is the moment you need it.